About four weeks before we took Naiad out of the water, the Reolink GO PT camera stopped working. I had seen the battery percentage drop steadily for about two weeks before it was too low to run the camera any more and that suggested that either the internal batteries had failed or that the solar power and connector were not supplying power to recharge said batteries.

Once I had Naiad set up in the hard I took the camera and plugged it in to one of the myriad USB chargers I had in the house and it started to recharge immediately. Once the battery was fully charged, I disconnected it from the charger, turned the camera on and then watched the power drain for a few days. This steadily decreased but no faster than expected given the proximity to the mobile tower and I concluded that it was not the internal batteries at fault. This was good news since changing the batteries on this particular model is not an easy job.

So, I turned my attention to the solar panel. This did not seem to be in very good condition, it was yellowed from three years in the sun and I could see that some of the layers in the panel were delaminating, a sure sign that the panel was on its way out.

However, the first thing to check for a suspected failed solar panel, according to the research I did about the subject, is the connector. This model uses a micro B USB socket and these have proved to be less than reliable for extended exterior use especially in marine conditions. Indeed, newer models use USB C sockets. It is not at all easy to test a micro USB plug as it is so small and the recommended way is to cut it off entirely, replace it with a known good plug and see if that cures the problem.

So, I cut of the plug, took the cable that I had just used to recharge the batteries and spliced the two together and plugged it in.

Nothing.

Having cut the wire from the solar panel I could check the output from the panel with a multimeter.

Also nothing.

Well, not enough to recharge the batteries even in full sunlight. Admittedly, it is Winter, but even so, the panel should have enough output to charge the batteries.

Now, replacement solar panels for the GO PT are readily available, new ones from Reolink or equivalents from other suppliers at half the price and it was one of the latter that I decided to buy. It didn't take long to arrive, courtesy of Amazon Prime, and as soon as it did I plugged it in.

Nothing.

What !!

I found that if I wiggled the plug I could get the charging light on the GO PT to light up, but not in a way that worked even 1% pf the time. So I cut the plug off, soldered the wires to the plug from the charging cable not forgetting to put on the waterproof cover, covered the join in each wire with heat shrink tubing and then the entire join with two more pieces of heat shrink and plugged it in again. This time instant charging.

Here's the result. The battery charged up from 70% in less than a day. I think that this issue is now solved.

Now if I can only stop birds from leaving their droppings on the panel. Yes, that white splodge on the left side of the panel was left there by some bird or other.

Time for a cup of tea.